Arguably the industry's top painter, The Art of Design founder Dean Loucks also painted the PUMA Ocean Racing sailboat. Photo courtesy The Art of Design

I so enjoyed the concept fellow OffshoreOnly.com columnist Matt Trulio ran with last week when he "Checked In" with Hering Propellers that I decided to do some checking in of my own this week. Although the extremely talented Dean Loucks, owner of The Art of Design (TAOD) in Elkhart, Ind., isn’t going to make your boat run faster like a prop from Hering might, Loucks can surely make your boat stand out. And the creative mastermind behind many of the most memorable performance boat paint jobs in the business has been up to quite a bit lately—both in and out of the marine industry.